Don't Fear the Reaper
by Cho Cozi Seyunolu
Summary: In London, the Doctor discovers a missing statue and a cryptic message left behind. The clues lead him to an American town called Moperville, where all is not as it seems. What kinds of dangers and mysteries will he face there?
1. The Investigation

**Don't Fear the Reaper**

By Cho Cozi Seyunolu

* * *

I do not own Doctor Who, El Goonish Shive, or any of their characters.

* * *

**Chapter 1: The Investigation**

Desmond looked around the gallery. It was a _mess_.

Three years as a security guard here at the museum, and the worst thing that had ever happened was someone trying to run off with a painting during operating hours, and one time that someone had broken a window and apparently been scared off by the resultant alarm. Nothing like _this_ had ever happened. He was just glad that he wasn't the night watchman; that man had a lot of explaining to do.

Whoever had done this, they were obviously a pro. No alarms went off, no signs of a forced entry anywhere in the building, no surveillance cameras saw anyone… but the Reaper, one of the prize statues in their collection, was gone. Or at least mostly gone.

He heard a commotion in the hallway off the gallery, and a tall, thin man walked in and ducked under the police tape. He wore a blue and brown pinstripe suit under a long brown trench coat, and had oddly spiked brown hair. Approaching the man, the security guard said, "Sir, you have to leave, this wing has been sealed off to collect evidence –"

The man's face registered sudden understanding as he patted his coat for a moment before reaching inside. "Detective John Smith, Scotland Yard. Here for the investigation," he said, flashing an ID. Slipping it quickly back into his pocket, he extended his hand, a big smile on his face. _Must be plainclothes, _the security guard thought.

"Desmond Jones," he replied, taking the detective's hand and waving off the other guards in the hallway. "I'm the head security guard for this wing. I didn't realize your people would get here so fast."

"Oh, you know us," John Smith replied, smiling widely and putting a slight hint of amusement in his voice. "To protect and serve and all that bit. So tell me Desmond, what _exactly_ happened here?" he asked, looking around.

"To be honest we aren't quite sure if it's an act of vandalism or theft yet, sir. Last night, the night watchmen closed down this wing of the museum like usual. And at around 4:15 AM, the video surveillance shows some kind of light falling on the statue, and then cuts out. When we came in this morning the camera was busted, like it had been hit by something." He gestured at the rock fragments littering the gallery. "The ground was covered with these. They're the same color and texture as the Reaper was, and a few are shaped like pieces of the statue, but others don't seem to fit and it's not nearly enough to add up to the whole thing."

"Can I see a picture of the original statue?"

"Uh, sure, here," Desmond said as he walked over to the entrance to the hallway and pulled a brochure out of a rack on the wall. "It's under the East wing highlights heading. We have better pictures on the computers and in the gift shop if you need them, plus the surveillance footage of course."

"Lovely," the detective said, enthusiastically thumbing through the brochure and opening it up fully when he reached the appropriate page. His face twitched briefly into an expression of surprise at what he saw, though, and he studied the picture intently before looking up.

Slipping the brochure into another pocket, he took a deep breath and asked another question. "That picture made it look like the pedestal had some writing on it; what did it say?"

"Well, that's the bit that makes me think somebody is messing with us. The Reaper had an inscription on the pedestal that said 'I rise only to reap what I have sown' – hence the name. The pedestal was a foot high and weighed hundreds of pounds, nobody could have chiseled pieces out if it overnight. But if you'll look over in the center of the debris…"

The two men gingerly stepped around the fragments littering the floor inside the police tape, detective Smith's trainers (_trainers… not exactly regulation_) making little noise compared to Desmond's shoes.

The detective stopped dead as he reached the middle of the roped off area. Looking down, he saw two thin flat plates of stone from the pedestal with ragged edges, but their inscriptions reading as clear as day, laid out end to end to produce a sentence:

"I Rise To Reap"

With a focused look on his face the detective reached into his trench coat again and produced a small pen-shaped device; silver, blue at the end. Crouching down, he telescoped it longer and started waving it over the fragments, the tip glowing a bright blue and it making a strange warbling buzzing sound. "What's that? What're you doing?" Desmond said, his face scrunching up as his confusion deepened. This man wasn't acting like a crime scene investigator…

"Oh… just looking for fingerprints," detective Smith replied, his eyes remaining focused on the stone fragments and his little cylinder.

"But you need to dust for that! You can't just see fingerprints with a blacklight," Desmond retorted, his confusion deepening.

"Nah… new model…" The detective was obviously very distracted, sweeping the blue glow over every square inch of both fragments and then bringing his device up to his face, staring intently at its side for a second before collapsing it and returning it to his pocket. "No help there, and I don't think you'll be finding fingerprints on any of these other pieces either. Just one more thing. You said the name of the statue was 'The Reaper' because of the inscription on its pedestal. Not because that was what the artist called it?"

"Uh, yeah, that's the other funny part about the story. Of all the works in this museum, we don't know who produced this one. It was found in a field several decades ago, with one set of footprints leading up to it –"

"– And no footprints leading away," the detective interjected, deadpan.

"…Exactly. The initial idea was some kind of publicity stunt but nobody ever claimed responsibility."

"Yeah, publicity stunt…" the detective echoed slowly, his eyes far away and his mouth not quite closing as he trailed off. Suddenly taking a deep breath and putting on a smile again, he looked back towards Desmond. "Well, thanks for your help, I think I'm done here for now. I'll just head out and, uh, make my report; the technicians will be here any minute to help you out more. Good to meet you, Desmond," he said, shaking hands once more, and turning on his heels and walking quickly down the hallway.

"Wait…" The man kept going around the corner. "How can we contact you? What department are you…" Desmond rounded the corner, but the detective was gone. He stood at the corner, dumbfounded.

Someone walked up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. "Excuse me, are you in charge here?"

"Ah, yes. What can I do for…?" Desmond turned around and was surprised to see a man with a sour expression on his face flashing him a badge.

"My name's detective Jake Brooke, I'm here from Scotland Yard with the forensics and investigative team. Can you direct us to the crime scene?"

"Wait, _you're_ from Scotland Yard… what about the other man who came before you? Is he with you?"

"What other man?"

Desmond's face fell. Something was definitely wrong here. "The man in the trench coat, with the funny hair. Detective John Smith…" His voice trailed off as he saw the look of incomprehension on the new detective's face.

"…Detective _who_?"

* * *

The lock on the maintenance exit shorted out, and the Doctor stepped outside. Striding quickly down the road, his face a thoughtful mask, he put the sonic screwdriver back in his trench coat and his hands in his pockets. What he had just seen was certainly not what he'd been expecting – though he wasn't quite sure _what_ he'd been expecting.

_At least it wasn't an Angel_, he thought. That was one of the first kneejerk fears that had gone through his mind when he heard about a missing statue – one of them on the loose in London would be a nightmare. But Angels didn't leave notes.

Turning a corner into an alley, the Doctor caught sight of a very familiar blue box. Walking up to it, he pulled a key from another pocket. Taking a quick glance around, he spied no one, and so quickly opened the door and slipped into the TARDIS.

Once the door to the massive interior was shut, he took off his coat and started to throw it onto the organic arches near the door before remembering something important he'd stashed in it. Reaching a hand into another interior pocket up to the elbow, he reached around for a few moments and extracted the stone fragment he'd palmed when the security guard was busy staring at his sonic screwdriver. He hadn't been able to tell anything substantive in the museum other than that the stone was artificial; transmuted from the air when it was created rather than quarried from the ground. He had a hunch as to what was going on, but he would need the TARDIS scanners to confirm it.

He placed the rock in a small circular depression on the console and began flipping switches and levers to engage the powerful (if a bit jury rigged) internal sensors. Extra-terrestrial symbols and graphs flashed across the screen as the TARDIS cycled through every method it was capable of to figure out just what was in that rock. Isotopic composition, radiation signatures, residual bio-energy, and time displacement readings flashed past one after the other. But then the Doctor grinned as the console pinged and the swirling symbols on the screen stabilized on the latest results, his hunch vindicated. "Ah, that's it! Classic lithosuspension! A living being with all its biofunctions paused and wrapped up in a mineral shell to protect it from – " He stopped suddenly, his face falling as he looked around, remembering he was alone. Talking to himself again. He'd been doing that a lot lately. Ever since Martha left. And ever since he lost Astrid… no, he wouldn't think about that, he couldn't, not _now_.

There wasn't time for that now anyway. That was in the past, and he had more past than he could deal with if he thought about it all the time; more than many beings could even conceive of. He had to focus on the present, or he risked losing himself in everything that had happened over his last two incarnations. Focusing on the panel once again, a much more serious look on his face, he realized that this wasn't just everyday lithosuspension. There was an impressive amount of psychic energy locked up in the rock too – psychic energy with a very peculiar pattern that he had only seen a few times before. "He's got to be a wizard," the Time Lord muttered to himself. He was pretty sure that the man he saw in the brochure wasn't an Uryuom or an Immortal, two other races that could channel energy like that and had a chance of being found on Earth. No, the only humans who could channel that much psychic energy were the so-called 'magic' users, and judging from the sheer amount that had been absorbed into the rock while the man had been frozen he had been a formidable one indeed.

Someone this powerful could do a world of hurt if they wanted to. Armed with the energy signature of the statue fragment, the Doctor turned the TARDIS's sensors outwards, searching for any evidence that the wizard's powers had been used again in the last few hours. At first he got nothing… but then, unmistakably, the scanner picked up the trace left by a trans-mat moving the mass of one person a few thousand miles, suffused with the wizard's unique stamp and less than an hour old.

He traced the wizard's trans-mat, though it was unlike any he'd ever seen before – the process had obviously not been tightly controlled by a computer, but instead been performed as if by feel. It was hardly a concentrated pattern, and used far more energy over a much larger area than it had to. After much fiddling with his scanner screen, the Doctor managed to narrow the trans-mat's exit point to a circular region about 20 miles wide in North America, just west of Chicago.

Pulling the scanner around to the other side of the console and jiggering the controls found there, he tried to narrow that further – to no effect. The signal was just too diffuse and unfocused. "Argh, that's not good enough!" the Doctor groaned in frustration, pacing around the console and ineffectually trying to fiddle his sensors into better working order. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he accepted that he wasn't going to get the reading any more clear. That area held a good sized suburban town, and bordered on a major city just a few tens of miles away. That was a LOT of people, and he didn't have any idea of this wizard's intentions. Was he a megalomaniac from the past, escaping from justice into the future? An adventurer, eager to explore the new world that had sprung up while he slept? Who knew how old this 'Reaper' could be…

"The Reaper…" the Doctor intoned aloud.

No. None of that fit. Not with his message, rising to reap what he had sown… this man was on a mission. Somewhere out there, there was something this man felt responsible for creating. Something that had awakened him from his sleep. Something dangerous? The Doctor stared at his scanner, thinking of the ominous words on those two chunks of stone. He looked around the empty, gently humming control room. It was just him, alone with no help. All he had to go on was a map of suburban Chicago, and a cryptic message engraved in stone. He had no idea what was going on there, who this man he was following even was, or what he might find. And no plan.

At least that part was business as usual.

He braced himself, and pulled a lever.

The floor vibrated under his feet as the still-recovering TARDIS roused herself from her rest. She powered up slowly, still unsettled from the Master twisting her into a paradox machine and then being run over by the Titanic. The Doctor gently manipulated and eased the controls as the time rotor thumped on, grinding and wheezing into action. As they dematerialized, he patted the console and nudged the capsule into the spacelike dimensions of the time vortex, grabbing a handrail as the floor tipped slightly from horizontal. "And we're off again, old girl," the Doctor said with a slight grin, stroking the rough skin of the console.

He glanced at the map in the scanner view, and the town centered on the trans-mat trace.

"Let's go see what's so interesting in Moperville…"


	2. Moperville

**Chapter 2: Moperville**

The time rotor wheezed as the TARDIS traversed the time vortex. Rushing busily around the console, the Doctor continued allowing himself a smile. The TARDIS in transit always felt the most like home of anywhere he had been in centuries, no matter where he was heading.

This trip would be a short one though; a quick hop between two cities on the same planet at the same time. It would only take a few more seconds for the capsule to zero in on the appropriate coordinates. The Doctor looked up at the scanner and listened to the whining of the engines as he started selecting a materialization point in town. His head whipped around, though, as an urgent beeping sounded from the other side of the console. He knew that sound. "That's not a good sou-" he began, and then his eyes opened wide as the symbols flashing past on the main plot suddenly shifted, and he gripped the console with all his strength.

With a sickening falling sensation, the floor lurched and tipped sideways by at least 45 degrees, nearly catapulting the Doctor to the floor. As he held on to the console and scrambled to stabilize the engines, he heard the time rotor's wheezing increasing in pitch and urgency and the background hum of the control room getting louder. He tried to force a materialization and land the TARDIS somewhere, anywhere, to cut the stress on the healing engine, but the levers were locked in place and from the sound of things they weren't being listened to anyway. Energy arced from a cable far above his head and the smell of smoke filled the air as the readouts started showing his destination point sliding forward in time, first by hours, then days...

The rotor wheezed faster and faster and higher in pitch, and began glowing a brighter green than it should have in a sane world. The Doctor soon resorted to grabbing a hammer off its hook and whacking the power controls over and over as the floor shook and started _spinning_. The engines couldn't take much more like this in their state. "Stop that! Stop it stop it stop it _stop it_!"

And then, as suddenly as it has begun, whatever _it_ was, it stopped. The floor gave one more lurch, this time in the opposite direction and flinging the Doctor to the floor, before leveling out. The time rotor wheezed down to a more normal rate, grinding through two more up and down cycles before landing with an indignant-sounding _whump _and rattle.

The Doctor scrambled to his feet. "What? What was that all about, eh?" he said while slipping on his specs, his eyebrows furrowed. At the console, everything seemed to be in place, though steam was rising from the vents below the metal grating in the floor and uncomfortable sounds continued to issue from the walls. He took a moment to lock down the engines so they couldn't start on their own accord, and checked his indicators. Everything seemed to still be working, but he wouldn't want to put the old girl through something like _that_ again.

Rushing around to the scanner, he noted that while he had indeed ended up somewhere in Moperville he had landed more than a month late. "Why'd you go and do that now?" he muttered, bringing up the transit logs and trying not to think about what could've happened outside while he was out of the action. The quick spatial hop he had tried to take the TARDIS on would've used up almost no energy; the route she'd forced herself into was much longer...

"...What?"

He could hardly believe his eyes. According to his readouts, the TARDIS had sensed not one but _two_ active dimensional rifts in town as it was trying to materialize. One tiny, just strong enough to pass a signal through, and another one that could've passed a few grams of matter. Under normal circumstances that wouldn't have posed a problem at all – there were safeguards all over the machinery to prevent the causality-warping effects of such interpenetration of universes from damaging the engines - but with the shields still down and the engines still healing, the TARDIS had sensed a threat and tried to escape by pushing into the future to a point after the rifts had closed. And that would've been the end of it, except that 4 weeks later came two _more_ dimensional rifts, each capable of passing a couple hundred pounds – a whole person – within one day! These were so big that the TARDIS had refused to even become causally entangled with them, and had haphazardly leaped forward to nearly a week after their closure.

The Reaper had certainly picked a busy town to visit...

His mind snapping back to the reason he'd come in the first place, the Doctor realized this little mishap had given his friend from the museum a whole month at large. Frantically turning his sensors outwards again, he searched for the wizard's power signature – and all his instruments promptly went completely wibbley. "Oh, what is it _now?_" he groaned. This 'quick hop' was getting just a little too interesting.

His sensors were completely overwhelmed. Outside was a veritable sea of psychic energy. So many sources using so much power that the entire town was awash in it. There was no way that could all have been the result of one individual, even over an entire month. It was like no place he'd seen since he'd taken Sarah Jane to the Uryuom home world. To pick an individual magic user or alien's identity out of that morass of interacting and interfering signatures, or even pin down a single signal's location, would be impossible.

_At least from in here..._

The Doctor knew he had to go out there and assess the situation for himself. See just what was going on out there. It wouldn't do him much good to sit around with no useful sensors. And the Reaper was obviously not the only strange thing going on here – not by a long shot. He just _had_ to see this town for himself.

He looked at the console, still venting steam from below. The TARDIS needed a rest; no matter where in town he had appeared he wouldn't dare moving her for at least a couple of hours now. Giving her an apologetic pat on the console, he walked over to where his coat had fallen off the rail near the door. Making sure his key and screwdriver were accounted for, he took a deep breath, and stepped outside...

He was facing a parking lot. A rather ordinary one.

He turned around. The TARDIS was backed up against a featureless brick wall, on a sidewalk that continued around the building. Following it around a corner that faced another parking lot, he found that he had landed at the end of some kind of strip mall - at least the TARDIS had the good sense to land up against a solid surface and not, say, in the middle of a highway. He stepped a bit out into the lot, ignoring a car honking at him, and read off the storefronts – a generic bank, a Radio Shack, a barbershop, a noodle place, and closest to his box, a comic book shop. It was very quiet – early afternoon on a Friday, if he had read the time readout correctly.

_Well that's boring,_ he thought.

He licked a finger and held it up, testing the breeze. Turning around until he was facing the center of town, the Doctor set off on foot to see what there was to see.


	3. Local Color

**Chapter 3: Local Color  
**

As the sun sank low in the sky and the air cooled rapidly, the Doctor walked on the side of the road back towards the strip mall he had parked in and reflected on what he had found in Moperville. He hadn't had much luck – very few questions had been answered, and those answers just raised more questions.

At least he had accounted for a fraction of the background interference mucking up his psychic scanners. As he walked around town, he had spotted at least three minimally morphed Uryuoms, one of them just a child leaving from an elementary school as it let out, wearing clothes equipped with low-level perception filters that would've screened most of the human population from noticing their species. He knew that the presence of Uryuoms in the United States was hardly dangerous or even all that unusual – he _had _been the one to lead their crippled colony fleet right into the middle of the American Revolution, he recalled with a smile – but it was still more than he would've expected to see mixed amongst the general population rather than in separate alien enclaves for several centuries. Their population in this town couldn't account for the whole of the interference the TARDIS had encountered, but they certainly were making a contribution towards it with the psychic energy their biology had evolved to use.

The rest of the interference had to come from awakened humans, he reasoned; those that had trained their brains to channel the same sort of energy and had thus gained 'magic' powers. But there still needed to be a significant population of magic users in town; he had seen no direct evidence for this in his travels besides a preponderance of odd hair colors that were often genetically linked to magical potential. For some reason, they were working very hard to live among the normal population while giving no clue as to their presence, much like the local Uryuom population. _Why are they so secretive_, he wondered. _Or_, he thought, reconsidering the question, _why are they trying so hard to blend in?_

And most importantly, _why did the Reaper come here?_

The Doctor walked past the big sign at the entrance of the strip mall he had parked in, looking up and shaking himself out of his reverie. It was much busier now that the evening had come; the population was no longer entombed in their workplaces and schools and were traveling about in their newfound Friday night freedom. After the strange, inconclusive things he had found during the day, he decided not much more useful would be gleaned from passive observation.

It was time to get engaged with the locals. With the TARDIS nearby he could always make a hasty getaway into the safety of its interior if he had to, so the question was just where to begin. Looking up and down the strip mall, he considered his options.

Radio shack? Wasn't busy enough, not enough chance of finding somebody he could talk to.

The bank? No, the people queuing up there wouldn't take kindly to someone delaying their business, and in his experience chain bank tellers could be some of the dullest people on this planet.

The barbershop? Nah, in order to be inconspicuous he would need to actually get a haircut there, and not only did he not have any American money from the right era but he had worked_ so_ hard on getting this hairstyle just right. He ran a hand over the seemingly casually arrayed strands of hair standing up on his head, and nixed that idea.

The comic book shop? A nerdy clientele, fed for years on stories of extraordinary things, all kinds of weird and obscure conversations going on inside all the time?

The Doctor grinned, and walked forward.

* * *

Justin sat behind the cash register, occasionally glancing back to keep an eye on the middleschoolers that inevitably populated the comic book store at this time of the Friday evening shift. A book was open in his lap as he sat on a stool behind the counter, but his eyes were not focused on it; instead, they stared blankly into space as his mind kept drifting back to Grace's upcoming birthday party.

_How did I let Elliot rope me into this, _he thought. Sure, it was an interesting concept, spending a few hours in the other sex's shoes with the help of Tedd's transformation gun. But he couldn't help visualizing that adjustment being much more awkward than _fun_, and didn't have any particular desire to see himself as a woman. He knew the main draw for most of his friends was seeing each other switched rather than a specific affinity for gender-swapping (Tedd excluded), and seeing Nanase as a man would certainly be interesting, but that hadn't been enough to convince him to go before.

No, Elliot had been the one to convince him. But the more he thought about it, the less he understood _how_. He had caved after Elliot had offered to let him play with his hair. Could that be it? Was he just so easily distractable by fun playthings that he would tolerate humiliation and awkwardness with all his best friends? Granted, it _was _Elliot's hair he might be playing with... the prospect of spending some time close to him wasn't so bad.

_But that's the thing_, he thought. _He will be a she_. That should've gotten rid of any pull that idea had for him. With them all switching genders, who was attracted to who would probably be all screwed up.

His eyebrows creased up a bit, the beginnings of an explanation of his behavior crystallizing in his head. _Wait a minute..._

His introspection was interrupted and his thoughts thrust into the background when the front door dinged as somebody walked in. The tall man in the suit, tie, and brown coat looked around for a moment, but instead of heading for any of the merchandise headed straight for Justin at the registers.

Taking a deep breath and standing up from his stool, Justin walked up to the counter and recited the mantra that they had drilled into him during training. "Evening sir, can I help you with something - "

The man, looking a bit tired but smiling, surprised him by suddenly flashing some kind official looking ID card. "Hello, John Smith, reporter for Comic Books Monthly. Just passing through and I saw this place; I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about business at this shop?" he said, pointedly looking around.

Caught completely off guard by his overly friendly demeanor and strong British accent, Justin just replied, "...Wha?"

Seemingly taking this as a sufficient response, the man continued. "Good man! Now, how long have you worked at this establishment?" His enthusiasm was a little bit unnerving.

"Uh, since a bit before the school year started, so around 7 months ago, but I don't get what you're - "

"Ah, so you're a local then? You live around here?"

"...Yeah..."

"Brilliant. So then, how have recent events affected business?"

"What do you mean, recent events?"

Mr. Smith continued, an extremely casual tone in his voice that Justin pegged as somewhat artificial. "Ah, you know, any recent local happenings. 'Specially the last month or so, maybe a bit longer. I mean you know how it's been around here lately..."

Justin froze up. Of course he knew how things had been around here in the last month. Secret things; sensitive things. The real reasons behind the goo attacks at Moperville North. Ellen's creation from Elliot. Grace being stalked by her brothers and Elliot's kidnapping by Damien. Rumblings of some kind of Lord Tedd from another dimension trying to kill Tedd...

The man's eyebrows rose at Justin's long pause and body language. "Everything all right?"

Fishing for a way to satisfy this man and avoid arousing suspicion, Justin replied. "Oh, yeah, it's just that I have friends who were in Moperville North when the goo attacked a while back, and - "

"What now? What goo? What happened? Was everyone alright?" The 'reporter' was talking a mile a minute, his face having suddenly gone rigid and serious.

Justin blanched. Of anything, he should've already known about _that_. "It was in the paper. Some... kid in chemistry class brought a beaker of goo to life and it attacked the school. Twice. It's gone now though, nobody was hurt," he said, his eyes wandering around as he started to sweat.

The man was still obviously concerned, and an edge remained in his voice even as it went back to sounding mostly inquisitive rather than worried. "When did this goo first come to life?"

Where had this guy been? "About a month and a half ago."

"That's too early..." Smith muttered, his eyebrows furrowed in a look of confusion.

"What?"

His eyes came back to reality. "Oh, nothing. Kind of new to this area, you know, don't really have the lay of the land." He glanced around at the rest of the shop, and looked back at Justin, putting another smile on his face. "Well, thanks so much for your help. I never caught your name..."

"Justin, but - "

"Nice talking to you Justin, maybe I'll see you here again!" He quickly shook Justin's hand, turned, and walked out the door, leaving Justin bewildered behind the cash register, wondering what in all hell just happened.


	4. Distractions

**Chapter 4: Distractions**

As night fell on Saturday, the TARDIS sat peacefully against a brick wall. People walked past the blue wooden box, noticing the new addition to the shopping center and passing it off as some ornate port-a-potty or an attempt by the Moperville city council to resurrect the concept of the telephone booth.

The peace was broken, however, as the doors suddenly flew open and the Doctor sprinted out, coat streaming behind him, and nearly crashed into a baseball-cap wearing student on his way into the comic shop. "Sorry, gotta dash!" the Time Lord shouted in apology over his shoulder as he adjusted the complicated dish-shaped device he held in one hand with his screwdriver, and listened to the faint hiss of static coming over an earbud connected to it by a dangling wire.

_Come on, just a few more…_

Talking to residents the night before had been nearly fruitless. Most either seemed to be completely clueless to anything unusual going on around them, or spouted outlandish and contradictory conspiracy theories. And one person, the ginger-haired cashier, had seemed to be hiding something. With the populace seemingly unwilling or unable to help, at least while he remained inconspicuous and didn't reveal himself, the Doctor had returned defeated to the TARDIS that night and continued trying to tune his psychic scanners to cut through the local interference – when he had gotten a brilliant idea.

Basically, he'd built a really _bad_ psychic detector. The TARDIS scanners were overwhelmed because the scattered, long-lasting background in town was swamping them; if he made a sensor with weak amplifiers and a narrow bandwidth that could only detect the strongest energy flows along a line-of-sight, then he would be able to home in on active sources rather than the noise they left behind. Scanning for the Reaper's particular unique signature would be nigh-on impossible with such a simple setup, but he could at least read raw power, something that the Reaper had plenty of. As he was building it Saturday afternoon though, the TARDIS console had pinged; the background energy had flared as if someone in town had recently used a reasonably powerful spell or empowered artifact. _All the more reason to get this thing working_, he'd thought. But it just kept happening – a few more in the later afternoon, and right as he was finishing his device they began again, at ten minute intervals or so. Finally getting a bearing, the Doctor had rushed out to find the source. Even if it wasn't the Reaper, it at least might be someone who could help him find him.

As flares came, one by one, he cut through neighborhoods and sprinted across asphalt, comparing the bearings he was getting as he ran to the rough layout of Moperville he had retained in his head. Eventually as the Doctor rounded a corner into a suburban subdivision, a loud crackle over the earbud signaled that he was closer than ever to one of the energy flares, and the compass in the middle of a clump of wires behind the parabolic dish swung to indicate the source was down the next street…

And he was there. A nondescript suburban house, with several cars in the driveway. Glancing up and down the street, he saw no one. Crouching behind some bushes on the edge of the property and turning a knob, he grinned a bit as the little light on the antenna at the center of the dish turned on and the sensor switched from omnidirectional to narrow-beam. He swept the parabolic dish across the house and listened to the Geiger-counter-like crackles and pops in his earpiece.

There were 3 – no, hold on, 4 – distinct, moving sources of energy all around the ground floor. None of them were strong enough to be the Reaper he sought, though. Sweeping the detector's beam over the house again, he also thought he caught a hint of another dim source in the basement. _Odd... _he thought, giving his device a shake and briefly unplugging the earpiece to blow on its contacts.

_So... there are at least four beings in that house that might be in the know about the local secrets_, the Doctor thought, his face set for now in a dispassionate mask. _But that's also four beings that are using some reasonably powerful energies, and might react badly to being disturbed_. Discretion was still in order.

Creeping towards the house along the property line, the Doctor noted that all the blinds had been carefully drawn over all the first floor and basement windows with a view of the street. Coming to the backyard fence, he slowly and quietly unlatched a gate and crouched as he walked along the handrail of a low deck, eyes on the lookout for anyone watching him. He searched the back wall of the house until he caught sight of a window that did not have the blinds tightly shut – only to see what looked like a few teenagers standing around talking. A tall dark-blue-haired boy and a girl with long ginger hair caught his eye first. The girl was holding a camera and talking to someone the Doctor couldn't see, but as he continued through the yard and poked his head just above the railing he was able to briefly see a shorter blond-haired boy and a brunette with the longest hair he'd seen this side of Betelgeuse. Remembering his readings, the Doctor consulted his dish.

His eyebrows furrowed as he swept the beam back and forth. The brunette was _definitely_ awakened. Watching through the window for a few minutes, though, the Doctor kept getting the impression that he wasn't seeing anything important going on; just another party. Just some kids spending time with their friends. _A house__ party that puts out stranger readings than frozen wizards... I almost should've expected it from this town. _

He wasn't about to let yet ANOTHER line of investigation hit a dead end. Yes, they were just having a party, but something going on in there had been detectable clear across the city if you had the right equipment. Time for the direct approach – walk right up to the door and say... something. He always seemed to come up with an appropriate line.

As the Doctor quietly crept back along the side of the house to the front yard, he gasped and pressed himself tightly against the wall as he heard the sound of a car engine and saw headlights sweep across the yard; another car was entering the driveway. No matter how direct he wanted to be, it wouldn't do to be caught sneaking around. Hearing the driver emerging from the front and opening another door, he hazarded a peek around the corner – and was simultaneously relieved and disappointed to find it to be just a pizza delivery boy. Gathering what looked to be a truly enormous assortment of foodstuffs in two separate bags, he walked up the driveway to the door. Deciding that this party was interesting enough to hazard a listen, the time lord crouched down and made his way silently behind the tall bushes that framed the front of the house.

He watched as the curly-haired pizza boy blinked in surprise as the door opened before he even rang the doorbell – and observed one of the stranger responses to a food delivery he'd ever seen.

* * *

* SLAM *

"There! Over and done with! Bye bye now! Goodbye! Nice evening! So long! Bye bye!"

Blinking and looking back and forth between the now shut door and the second bag of pizza he'd brought, Matt Cohen stammered out a reply to the (rather pretty) uniformed girl behind the door. "Um, I still have more pizza to give you..."

"DAMMIT, NANASE!" the angry feminine voice retorted, and the purple-haired girl, so familiar but impossible to place, forcefully opened the door, yanked the proffered boxes out of his hands, did an about-face without ever making eye contact, and kicked the door shut behind her again.

As the door slammed in his face for the second time, he sighed resignedly and slipped the delivery's money into his pocket. Why did he always have to get the awkward jobs?

"It's a simple job. Easy money!" his friend had told him. What his friend hadn't told him about was all the bizarre things you come into contact with when you visit twenty strangers' houses every night. At least this time he hadn't been greeted by someone trying to convert him to pastafarianism or screaming at him for being thirty seconds late. Not getting something like that was always a plus. On the other hand, from the uniform it looked like there was yet _another_ person at his school – and a cute girl at that – that he had never even noticed. She'd almost certainly have recognized him as the head of the student council... great, one more story going around about his social ineptitude.

_I mean, I TRY to be a nice guy. I try to take an interest in people. I try to represent the students well to the school. Why doesn't anything ever work out right?_

A thump followed by a muffled grunt from behind the bushes in front of the house startled him and brought him back to the present. "Hello?" he ventured, backing up slightly. "Is somebody there?" _If I stumbled onto a home invasion on top of everything else, it'll just make my entire night,_ he thought to himself, half exasperated and half fearful.

Much to his surprise, a tall man wearing a suit and dirt-streaked trench coat stumbled out of the bushes, grumbling. He caught something to the effect of, "...knew this coat was too long... never happened with the scarf..." in an accent he normally only ever heard on BBC America.

"What are you doing there?" he asked wide eyed, his heart racing for a moment as he saw something in the man's hand... realizing after a moment that it didn't look like a weapon. If anything, it looked more like one of those long-range microphones you could use to eavesdrop on people, especially considering the wire leading up to his ear. _Even better, a peeping tom._

The man raised his hands, saying "Oh, me? Just, uh, reading the water meter! See?" he said, indicating the device in his hand. He smiled, but his eyes gave away that he wasn't entirely sincere.

"On a saturday night? With a microphone?" Matt slipped a hand into his pocket, where his cell phone was stored, just in case.

"Oh... I suppose it does look like one, doesn't it? Well, you see, it's, ah, one of those new sonic water meters..."

Matt stared at him blankly, his hand gripping his phone in his pocket even harder as he started backing up towards his car again.

The man could obviously tell his story wasn't going over well. His face fell and his eyes darted around at his surroundings for a few seconds. Briefly making eye contact, he suddenly pointed straight behind Matt. "Look, a distractio – !"

The man's face suddenly lurched into a look of immense surprise, his arm and finger still outstretched pointing behind Matt as he trailed off, mouth open. His eyebrows scrunched together as he suddenly exclaimed, "What!" Not turning around, Matt pulled his phone and car keys out of his pocket as he prepared to get into his car, not buying the man's transparent ruse –

Suddenly, from behind him, an exasperated voice spoke. "Oh _no_... you? _Again_? Hell no, I'm _outta_ here. I've got things to do. You're on your own."

Head whipping around to follow the tall man's nearly pained gaze, Matt saw a very distinctive bright red, horned avian with its brows creased in disgust over its beady eyes as it stared at the man. As he watched, it turned around and took flight, its barbed tail making a unique silhouette against the still faintly blue glowing sky.

He watched as the Demonic Duck flew off. "What on Earth was all _that_ about?" Matt asked, turning around...

He never heard the Doctor's reply, muttered half a block away as he sprinted down the street to began a night of running, wandering, and hoping the police weren't after him:

"Hell if I know..."


	5. First Impressions

**Chapter 5: First Impressions**

Nanase reached into her wallet and extracted a few bills, handing them to the hairdresser. As the woman counted out change behind the register, she turned her head and glanced back at the long mirror running the length of the barbershop. An unfamiliar reflection stared back over its shoulder at her. Certainly not unwelcome, but it would still take some getting used to.

Change in hand, she thanked the hairdresser and stepped with her new boots out the door onto the sidewalk. The cool air on her ears and neck was a shock; she stood outside the door for a moment before turning and striding down the strip towards the spot her ride was killing the time at.

As she approached the comic shop, Justin emerged from inside "Hey, perfect timing!" she called out. He turned towards the sound of her voice – and his eyes went wide and he stopped dead as he saw her new look.

"Nanase... wow..." As she approached his position, he reached up and lightly ran a hand over her short, bright red hair. "You know... this actually looks good!" Taking exception to his wording, she shot him an evil look.

Raising his arms defensively, he responded. "Hey, hey, I was just worried that getting all that cut off was a good idea! Short hair has fewer options for styling." He smiled, evidently pleasantly surprised. "But you're looking good! You pull off the short hair real well."

"Thanks," she said, her expression softening – but she winced as her mind went forward to the next step in her plot. "Here's hoping it goes over this well at home..."

"Best of luck," Justin replied, turning to walk with her towards where his car was parked between the Radio Shack and the barber's. "Anywhere else you need to head to, or are you ready to head back?"

"I think I should just get it over with," Nanase said grudgingly, adjusting the bottom of her new shirt; it was a lot more form-fitting than her usual outdoor attire. "The hair and the clothes were the only things I really had planned, and if I went out and got a nose ring or something I'd just give my mom a heart att– Oof!"

As they had passed the door to radio shack, a man had rushed out and plowed into her, nearly knocking her over. As she regained her balance (and saw the man flail about for a second before settling himself) she blurted out "Geez, watch where you're going!"

"Sorry," the suited man with the up-do said with a strong accent, "Wasn't paying attention." He pointedly turned to one side and hurried off in the direction they'd come from, fumbling as an electronic noise sounded from under his coat.

"Well, someone's in a hurry," she said in a huff, starting again towards Justin's car – but Justin was frozen behind her, looking at the receding man as he turned the corner at the end of the strip mall. "Hey, you coming?"

"It's that guy!" Justin hissed at her, hurrying up to the car.

"What guy?"

"The creepy Smith guy who asked me weird questions in the shop on Friday and's been hanging around here all week!"

"Creepy people hang around the comic shop _all the time_," she replied deadpan, as she opened the door and hopped in the passenger's seat.

Justin shook his head as he closed the driver's door and turned the key in the ignition. "No, this guy's _weird_... it's like he's _looking_ for something. He's been walking back and forth just outside the shop on every one of my work shifts since Friday, and spending _way_ too much time making calls in that new phone booth. He's always got earphones on and periodically stops strangers to talk to them. I've been starting to wonder if I should be calling your uncle about him."

Nanase was about to tell him that her uncle had way more important things to worry about than another creepy comic geek. As they drove past the comic book store on the way out of the parking lot though, another thought crossed her mind.

"Speaking of weird things, what's the deal with the blue phone booth thing anyway?"

Justin shook his head. "Beats me. It's not like anybody's going to use it... anybody other than our little friend, anyway. I just hope they take it away, myself..."

* * *

The Doctor frowned at the receding car from behind the TARDIS, and its passenger that had set off his sensor. Another awakened person, this time leaving in the car he'd seen at that house. Had she been there that night?

Stepping out from behind the TARDIS and slipping the device back into his coat, he returned to Radio Shack to find that last bridge rectifier for his scanner upgrade. He'd been chasing signal after signal for days, to no effect. It was just a string of normal people, one after the other after the other. _The strangest thing here was a __**house party**__ for cripes sake,_ he thought again as he stepped into the store. Going past the cashier and small TVs on display to the back shelves, he resumed searching for the exact components he would need to upgrade his crude psychic scanner into one that could selectively look for the Reaper's signature. It'd be another all-night job, even if he could find everything he needed, but he couldn't leave, no matter how frustrated he was, until he was sure the man from the statue was harmless or had already left.

Sorting through a drawer, he once again considered calling up a local UNIT branch, or coming clean with one of the awakened humans or uryuoms in town – and once again concluded he shouldn't. People who got involved in his life got hurt. _People involved with_ people involved in his life got hurt. He thought back to Martha's family, and the year that never was. Forced to lick the Master's boots for a year, just because their daughter helped him, just to get at him.

_Never again. _He had to tackle this alone.

His face lit up and his melancholy thoughts lifted though, as he found what he was after. "Ah, there you are, you little devil!" the Doctor chirped, as he pulled a bag of rectifiers with exactly the right ratings out of a drawer. Turning, he walked towards the cashier, where someone was trying to negotiate a return. _It's always something, _he thought as he settled into line, biding his time. _Ah well, it's not like the Reaper's going anywhere. He's probably long gone, dealt with whatever he came for. A shame, I would've liked to meet him. _Letting his attention wander, his eyes went to one of the mini TV screens on the shelf, tuned to some kind of local news broadcast. He absentmindedly listened to the reporter, standing in front of a local high school... and suddenly, his entire attention was on the woman's report.

"..._Severe repairs_ after mysterious extensive damage to the floor, the origins of which remain mysterious. And just today, animal control was called about what has been described as an _evil monkey_. No one was hurt and physical evidence of the creature remains sparse, but _several_ witnesses attest to it having been at the school..."

"Sir? Hello?"

The young man behind the counter started waving his arms, and the Doctor snapped out of the state in which he had failed to notice the line in front of him disappear. "Uh, sorry. Just this bag, okay? Kind of in a rush." He started fishing through his pockets for some form of cash, too antsy to take the time to sign a receipt after using the psychic paper as a debit card.

The cashier rang up the purchase, and the Doctor snatched it up from the counter. "Your total is twelve fifty seven -"

"Here, keep the change," the Doctor said quickly as he turned and practically jogged out the door, after dropping something on the counter.

The cashier picked it up, and turned the 1895 gold double eagle coin over in his hands.

"Uh... sure..."

The Doctor was back inside the TARDIS in moments. _Untraceable evil-looking simian in a town full of magic users? __That's a tracking summon if I ever heard one,_ he thought, his mind racing. Only a fraction of magic users could summon fully autonomous semi-sentient beings like those, and none of the one's he'd scanned thus far were powerful enough.

But the Reaper was.

Dropping his purchase on one of the seats, he tried to think things through. The Reaper was almost certainly looking to undo something he had created, reaping what he'd sown. He'd left no trace for over a month. And now he was using a tracking summon, a notoriously unreliable and volatile being generally only used in desperation, that had wound up running around unconcealed in a school.

What did it all mean? He hadn't a clue. But someone willing to risk such a summon being seen in this town was rushed, reckless, desperate, or all three. And _definitely_ not from around town, where an air of utter secrecy prevailed. He didn't have time to waste perfecting his detector, or staying hidden. He had to see this through sooner rather than later; needed to take a chance.

Stepping up to the console, he unlocked the engines with the snap of a few switches, and engaged the time rotor with a hollow metallic thunk. As the TARDIS smoothly took off and dematerialized, he called up the map of the town and guided the capsule through the vortex to the coordinates of his only real lead.

* * *

Mr. Verres slipped the sonic wand into his pocket. He was reasonably sure that his son's friends now understood their situation, and what they would need to do to keep their newly awakened powers under control. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm out of exposition. I'm going to go order some custom spell books for you two so we can keep track of your –"

Mr Verres stopped dead and his eyes went wide behind his glasses as he heard a wheezing sound, waxing and waning from the basement. He'd heard this noise before; everyone in his line of work had. It was in the surveillance footage they all watched in their first week of training, the audio files appended to UNIT reports they got from Britain – it was even described in George Washington's secret memoirs. And he knew what it meant. "No..."

Tedd and his friends were sitting up straighter from their positions on the living room furniture, looking around. A look of confusion passed on his son's face. "Dad, what's going -"

He pointed straight at Tedd. "Don't go downstairs; NOBODY move from this spot." He turned to point at Elliot and Ellen. "_Nobody_, understand? I'll be back in a moment." With that he took off as fast as his knees would let him up the stairs to the master bedroom, already dialing the office emergency number on his cell phone as the noise from downstairs reached a crescendo and ended in a thump. As he sprinted down the hall to the triple-locked bedroom door, the operator finally picked up.

"This is Edward, now be quiet and listen. I have a code 9, that's a code 9... my basement. _No_, this isn't a drill! It's _materializing in my basement_! Just get a response team on their way here, now! If I don't get back to you in ten minutes assume the worst... I'm getting it right now... Okay, hurry." He flipped the phone closed as he undid the last lock, and rushed over to the bed and pulled a combination-locked box out from under the mattress... and after a moment of spinning, extracted his standard issue field wand. Gripping the artifact in his right hand, he took a deep breath. He hoped to God he wouldn't need to use it, but he'd read the flies. Wherever the Oncoming Storm went, terror was never all that far behind.

Downstairs, the gang had, of course, up and moved to the kitchen next to the basement stairs the second he'd left.

"It stopped," Grace said in a whisper, ear pressed against the door, after the high-pitched scraping sound had silenced itself.

"Why's your dad so nervous?" Sarah asked anxiously, in hushed tones.

"Yeah. Is one of your projects going crazy or something down there?" Elliot continued.

Tedd's face was the picture of confusion as he shook his head. "Everything down there but the TF gun is either in pieces or years old. I've never heard something like _that _before."

Elliot closed his eyes and focused as Sensei Greg had taught him, reaching out with his mind. He was quiet for a moment, but then his eyes flew open. "There's somebody down there!" he hissed.

"What?"

"Someone's gotten downstairs! I can sense him, and he feels... _weird_." He struggled to put the mental sensation into words. "Powerful, but... the wrong _kind_ of powerful? I don't know how else to describe it."

A clatter sounded from downstairs, followed by a short exclamation by an unfamiliar voice. The teens started, and Elliot turned to his girlfriend. "Get out of here. Now."

Sarah was about to protest, but Elliot caught her eye. She saw his imploring look of concern, and wordlessly started backing into the living room.

"Someone's coming!" Grace hissed from Tedd's side, as footsteps sounded from the base of the stairwell. Sarah watched furtively from around the corner as the four other teens backed away from the door. Tedd just looked nervous, but Elliot balled his hands into fists as Grace nervously raised her antennae to a TK-ready position and her fingernails seemed to start to sharpen. As Ellen too made fists, green energy crackled between her fingers.

As the footsteps approached and the doorknob turned, Mr. Verres hurried back from the stairs. Sarah turned her head as he approached, some kind of wand in his hand. She heard the door start to open behind her, and Tedd's father frantically called out to her friends, "NO, don't - !"

A green flash burst behind her, and as Tedd's father skidded to a halt, Sarah quickly turned again and laid eyes on the interloper for the first time...


	6. Omake Files 1

Omake files – #1

Chapter 7 is written, and chapter 8 half-written – but Chapter 6 continues to elude me. In the mean time, here are some lovely non-canon 'outtakes' to keep you amused...

* * *

In a disused government warehouse with a single incompetent guard, a breeze stirred. That breeze strengthened as a wheezing, scraping sound started to issue from its source, and a blue box faded into view.

The TARDIS landed with a thump, and the doors opened. The Doctor poked his head out, and peered around the seemingly endless rows of boxes. "Oh come on, what is it with you people and stockpiling huge mounds of artifacts you don't understand?"

As the Doctor stepped out of his capsule, he was followed by a teenage girl and an elderly wizard. "You'd have to ask Tedd's dad about that," Ellen replied a bit defensively. "Now come on, the Diamond is this way. C'mon, lets do this fast, the guard here is an asshole."

Striding confidently as she recognized the layout of the warehouse, Ellen lead the Doctor to the artifact that had created her – the artifact they were there to destroy.

When they finally came to it, the Doctor peered at it with a serious look on his face. Fishing out his sonic screwdriver, he pointed the glowing blue tip at the crystal and pressed a button. The screwdriver emitted a whine, and he sighed in relief as the crystal resonated in sympathy. "No special force fields or deadlocks or anything on it. It's not indestructable. Durable, but not indestructible." Abraham gave a sigh of relief, letting out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

Ellen was fidgeting. She remembered the last time she was here. The confusion, the feeling of being cheated, the hopelessness... she didn't want to stick around longer than she had to. "Okay, let's just grab it and get out of here."

"What are your plans for destroying it?" the ancient wizard asked. Having failed to destroy it for so many centuries, he had long since decided to allow the apparent expert free reign.

"Oh, the volcanoes of classical Pyrovillia will destroy just about anything. Quick hop in the TARDIS, we toss it out the door, and it'll never trouble anyone again." The Doctor had stepped right up to the diamond. He walked around its pedestal, admiring its workmanship. Abraham may have been impulsive and a tad thoughless, not thinking through the implications of the magical constructs he had created and anchored within the diamond, but he had to admit it was a superb artifact. It was almost a shame to destroy it... but no. This thing had ruined too many lives, created too many monsters, and precipitated too many identity crises for it to just rattle around in his attic for all eternity. He reached down to grab it.

Ellen's eyes went wide. "Wait! That thing's dangerous! You should get gloves or-"

But it was too late.

The Doctor's hand touched the diamond, and it immediately began to hum and glow an eerie green. _Oh no..._ he thought, and tried to pull away, but it was as if his arm were no longer under his control, gripping the diamond ever harder. He felt his hair start to stand on end, energy coursing through his body...

In a sudden flash of green light laced with streamers of yellow vapor, he was blown backwards until he hit the nearest row of boxes, containing who-knows-what extraterrestrial or wizardly artifacts. He groaned in pain, unable to open his eyes... at least until he realized there were a chorus of groans coming from all around him.

The Doctor opened his eyes and looked up, only to see Ellen standing near the diamond, her eyes wide, her hands clamped over her mouth, looking around in shock. Abraham was not in much of a better state, mouth wide, eyes going back and forth from the green and yellow still-scintillating diamond to multiple spots along the walls. The Doctor followed their eyes... and his worst fears were confirmed.

Ten men, wearing ten identical pinstripe suits and trenchcoats, but with ten diferent heights and hairstyles, stood up. All were quiet as they turned on the spot, surveying the others. One reached into a pocket, extracting a sonic screwdriver and sweeping it over an outstretched hand, and frowned at the apparent results. Others reached up and touched ears, noses, hair of length varying from shoulder-length waves to a near buzz-cut.

The seconds dragged on. _What does one say in a situation like this_, the Doctor wondered. Eventually, though, the man with the brown unruly curls and a large nose spoke up. "Oh dear... well, which of us is going to drive?"

* * *

Mrs. Kitsune turned away from Agent Cranium, as the blond walked away down the hall. Her underlings instructed in their roles, the middle-aged woman let her veneer of command at last slip away. She at last let herself think about the fact that her daughter and her daughter's good friend nearly died – but before she could let it sink in, a man turned the corner of the hospital corridor. A man wearing a long brown trenchcoat, trainers, and the second spikiest hair she had ever seen. A man she never thought in a million years she would ever have seen again.

"Doctor!" she called out, unable to stop herself from running towards him, like she had so many times all those years ago.

The Time Lord was taken aback, but managed a smile at last right as she hugged him. "Oh! Wow, it's been... ages..."

"Twenty five years," Mrs. Kitsune said in a huff. "I was sure you'd forgotten me."

"How could I ever forget you? The purple-haired Queen of the TARDIS? But – what're you doing here?"

She pulled away from him, to look up at his perplexed expression – and her own expression hardened. "Nanase is my daughter."

"Your... daughter? Oh, ah, um..."

She backed away from him. The happiness to see him in her eyes had given way entirely to an intense, steely fire. "I'll give you one piece of advice. Stay away from her, Doctor. You're amazing, but you're a danger to everything you touch. I will **not** let you drag her along with you, no matter how many UNIT or FBI regs I have to break..."

* * *

"Does it ever bother you, Amy, that your life doesn't make any sense?"

Amy had nothing to say to that. She gazed uncomprehendingly at the Doctor... until a bolt of energy shot behind her head right into the Pandorica.

Screaming, the time-travelers rushed around the ancient cube-shaped prison.

"What was that?"

"Okay, I need a proper look – gotta draw its fire, give it a target."

"How?" Amy asked, breathlessly.

"You know how somehow I have really brilliant ideas?"

"Yes..." Amy sighed out.

The Doctor grimaced. "Sorry..."

Jumping out from behind the Pandorica, the Doctor pointed behind the metallic arm lying on the floor and yelled:

"Is that a Demonic Duck of some sort!"

The arm's turret twisted around to fire behind it, away from the Doctor and Amy. And as the Doctor ran forwards to neutralize it, a red, horn-tailed blur dodged energy blasts and sped out from under Stonehenge, screaming "Daaaaamn youuuu Doooooctor...!"


	7. Omake Files 2

Omake Files 2

My apologies for the long long LONG wait – it's been a hectic summer, and I just moved several hundred miles. Two chapters are written, with only a little bridging material required to bring it online. In the mean time, more outtakes!

* * *

Jack took the hand offered to him, shaking it vigorously and putting on his best winning smile. "Hello! Captain Jack Harkness, at your service!"

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on, Jack -"

"For the hundredth time, I jut said 'hello'! There's just no pleasing you, is there?"

Justin almost blushed, but kept his wits about him. "I really don't mind..."

* * *

"Oh, look! There it is, the actual one!" Amy said, excitedly rushing up to the Van Gogh on the gallery wall.

"Yes... you can almost feel his hand painting it right in front of you; carving the colors into shapes..." the Doctor replied, grinning and waving his arms like he was brandishing a chisel. His posture shifted, though, and he paused. "...Wait a minute..."

"What?"

He pointed at the canvas, tenser than he had been a moment ago. "Just... look at that."

"What?"Amy asked again, growing concerned.

The Doctor's face was subdued, his voice quiet and fast. "Something very not good indeed."

"What thing very not good"

"Look there, in the window of the church."

The Doctor pointed at a speck of color in the bottom of a window, and Amy leaned in to get a better view. At first she couldn't quite parse what she was seeing, but after a few moments her eyebrows furrowed and she spoke in a confused tone.

"Is that... a _demonic duck_ of some sort?"

The Doctor nodded solemnly. "Oh yes. He's a devil, that one..."

* * *

Jack reached his hand out to the brunette, putting on his best winning smile with _extra_ bright white teeth. "Hel_lo_! Captain Jack Hark-"

*ZAP!*

Ellen lowered her hand, green energy still crackling between her fingertips. The Doctor lowered his hands from shielding his eyes, and looked on in abject horror at the new sight in front of him.

Ellen spoke up. "I didn't like his tone."

* * *

"You're not alone, Justin."

Justin opened his (well, maybe at this moment, _her_) tear-filled eyes, catching his breath long enough to look up at Susan. "Huh?"

Susan just let her words flow out, in her familiar but for now unnervingly low voice. "You have Nanase, Ellen, Tedd, Grace, Sarah, Me, and even Elliot. You haven't known all of us for very long, but we're all your friends." She took a breath, looking into Justin's eyes. "Being single is _not_ the same as being alone. It may suck that you can't be romantic with the one you love, but you have people who care about you, and they like you for who _you_ are."

Justin's eyes teared up. "Susan I..." Susan gasped as she was pulled into a tight hug. "Thank you..."

Eyes wide, she paused. She was never good with words at times like these, and some warm but uncomfortable feelings dredged up by the close contact certainly weren't helping. "...Y-you're welcome?"

Justin pulled back, their eyes meeting... and that was all it took. In some corner of Susan's mind, she registered surprise with the speed at which their lips met, the urgency and hunger with which her hands reached around Justin's body. Even as part of her screamed that this was wrong, this would end badly, she reached up under Justin's shirt and rolled on top of his feminine form, part of her thinking it just felt so right.

At first, the two of them were too absorbed in each other to notice the breeze that flowed through the basement, or rhythmic wheezing sound that began emanating from the air not ten feet away. Once that wheezing rose to a loud grinding, and a pulsing light fell over the entwined pair, Susan opened her eyes for just a moment – and with a yelp sat bolt upright.

Justin was confused, and terrified that he'd ruined things. "Susan, what-" he began, before he followed his friend's gaze and his mind registered what was happening on the other side of the room. Sitting bolt upright himself, the two of them watched as a tall, blue telephone booth faded in and out of existence before stablizing, fully there, with a loud _whump_ - and the door opened.

The man stepped out nonchalantly, long scarf trailing down over his coat until it literally dragged across the ground. He stopped, though, looking confused. "Well, this isn't -" He caught sight of the two teenagers. "Ah, hello there!" the man said with a smile, eyes just a little too wide under his unkempt curly brown hair. "Be a dear and tell me, is the Eye of Orion anywhere nearby?"

Justin and Susan turned to look at each other – and as one, jumped to their feet and bolted up the stairs.

"Where are you going? It's a simple question, I shouldn't thing you need to check your encyclopedia or..." The Doctor trailed off, as Sarah Jane walked up behind him.

"Oh come on, Doctor, where did you take us this time?"

"Early twenty-first century American house, from the look of the computer over there. Some kids just ran off, they seemed scared -"

"Scared of _you!_ Now come on, you promised me the Eye of Orion. No going off on tangents this time, we've had enough of that!"

As the blue box vanished, unsticking itself from the physical plane, a large, red, horned duck looked on. Once the last sound had faded away, he turned to go. "Well, my work here is done."

* * *

Jack reached out to take the hand of the slender girl in the TARDIS doors, struck by her long, flowing, dark blue hair. The Doctor sure knew how to pick them. "Well hel-_LO _there. Captain Jack H-"

*WHAM*

As Jack lay - out cold - on the ground outside the TARDIS and Susan stood over him with a cracked wood and stone hammer clutched in both hands, the Doctor looked out the doors over the console and just buried his face in his hands. _That man just never learns..._


End file.
